Is Firefox OK?

Mozilla’s privacy-heavy browser is flatlining but still crucial to future of the web.

Read the whole story

 

[LDA 6502]

I am one of the handful of people using Firefox on my phone, specifically so that I could use PrivacyBadger and uBlock. It usually works well, but there are a handful of mobile sites that don't work with FF.

I used to use Google Chrome as my backup mobile browser, but when I started getting spam from recently visited sites and noticed that the 'delete cookies upon exit' option had disappeared, I disabled it and replaced it with Edge.

Another complaint with Google is how their sites seemed to break with such regularity on FF. I recall another article from several years back about FF's declining market share that interviewed someone at Mozilla about it and they concluded that it was likely deliberate, but that FF wasn't going to bite the hand that feeds it. Problem was, every time it happened, FF lost market share and never regained it. Sure would be nice if Mozilla could find a better corporate sponsor.

 

[Deleted member 1]

I used to be a devoted Firefox user until performance issues got so bad that they forced me to start looking at other browsers.

Maybe because I use (and love) Firefox that I feel more emotional than otherwise when I read stuff like this! One big condemnation without any context or even timeframe (like recently or years and years ago)?

Kinda like me telling everyone... I like America but traveling for days and days over nonexistent roads in a covered wagon forced me to travel in Europe instead. A total exaggeration, of course, but like America, Firefox has improved tremendously (I'd say since v57 -- it's currently v97 now).

 

[Tagbert]

Where can I get a browser that allows tabs under the address bar? This can be done in FF (what I use now), but there is this continual war between the developers and users on this feature.

I don’t understand the concept of URL address over tabs. That URL is specific to the current tab. If you change the tab, the URL shown is that that tab. If you change the URL it changes for that tab. There is no overall URL that applies to multiple tabs.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Where can I get a browser that allows tabs under the address bar? This can be done in FF (what I use now), but there is this continual war between the developers and users on this feature.

I don’t understand the concept of URL address over tabs. That URL is specific to the current tab. If you change the tab, the URL shown is that that tab. If you change the URL it changes for that tab. There is no overall URL that applies to multiple tabs.

In my case, tabs are shown across the very top of my screen... and the address bar is shown immediately below. Op wants to see the reverse: address bar first, and then tabs. Apparently, FF allows either...

 

[archtop]

I used to be a devoted Firefox user until performance issues got so bad that they forced me to start looking at other browsers.

Maybe because I use (and love) Firefox that I feel more emotional than otherwise when I read stuff like this! One big condemnation without any context or even timeframe (like recently or years and years ago)?

Kinda like me telling everyone... I like America but traveling for days and days over nonexistent roads in a covered wagon forced me to travel in Europe instead. A total exaggeration, of course, but like America, Firefox has improved tremendously (I'd say since v57 -- it's currently v97 now).

Firefox has been my main browser on multiple machines for years and will be for the foreseeable future. That said, I know how a couple of bad experiences can make people decide to never come back to something -- happens all the time.

 

[Deleted member 1]

I used to be a devoted Firefox user until performance issues got so bad that they forced me to start looking at other browsers.

Maybe because I use (and love) Firefox that I feel more emotional than otherwise when I read stuff like this! One big condemnation without any context or even timeframe (like recently or years and years ago)?

Kinda like me telling everyone... I like America but traveling for days and days over nonexistent roads in a covered wagon forced me to travel in Europe instead. A total exaggeration, of course, but like America, Firefox has improved tremendously (I'd say since v57 -- it's currently v97 now).

Firefox has been my main browser on multiple machines for years and will be for the foreseeable future. That said, I know how a couple of bad experiences can make people decide to never come back to something -- happens all the time.

Me too. But I think I would at least specify whether my bad experience was years ago (and acknowledging that things may well have changed) or if recent. Heck, if recent, I'd probably emphasize that!

 

[4XjrPz6t]

While I understand why a lot of consumers have dropped Firefox for Chrome as Android took off, I think there's another really big reason Chrome is so dominant. They provide .admx files which allows businesses with a Windows ADDS environment to manage Chrome and it's configuration in a very granular way. I remember pushing it hard as a sysadmin because it was a realistic alternate to IE we could centrally manage. That's the sort of thing that, because of privacy concerns nowadays, Mozilla could use to displace significant market share with privacy-conscious businesses. There needs to be a comparable "Firefox for Work" sort of option that can be centrally managed.

There is a firefox for work with ADMX templates. Heck DISA just released GPOs for firefox last month.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/

Except that it is very poorly done and missing a lot of options. Chrome's ADMX is fully fleshed out and easy to configure every option that I need. Firefox's is missing many things, is poorly documented, and in many cases difficult and non-intuitive to use. I want to push it out to more systems, but until it has better ADMX support it's too much work.

 

[Tagbert]

I recently switched from Safari to FF on my desktop Mac for the extensions, but I miss the easy access to certain functions that I had in Safari. For example, is there an easy way to toggle Javascript in FF? Other than that, no major issues.

You want the No Script plugin

 

[magpye]

When Firefox became popular, I believe it was supported by DONATIONS. And it was used by people with a certain set of preferences.

When you start ordering everything around pleasing your "business partners", it's not a big surprise if you no longer please users. And when you try to go for the "bigger market" by making a worse copy of your competitor's product, it's not a big surprise if you don't capture any of their users, but lose your own.

Are we talking about browsers or political parties here?

 

[LosAngelesPandas]

MBAs took over and Mozilla started not only to ignore its user base, they started to roll out changes which alienated their user base. That's what happened.

Edit: removed the remark about SJWs as people here find it inappropriate. OK. Let's forget the history of Mozilla.

If I had a penny every time somebody mentioned social justice warriors unironically.

I would be unfathomably rich. This is a fact.

 

[LosAngelesPandas]

I tried to use Firefox again about 4 years ago. Idk what it's like now, but at the time one of the websites I used regularly wouldn't load properly, so I ditched it almost immediately. That's harsh maybe, but I just want a browser that works. If other users ran into small issues here or there, they likely did the same.

"Idk what it's like now"

Classic internet comment right there. Nice.

 

[jdale]

It used to be EXTREMELY personalized and personalizable, right out of the box, even without extensions. Mozilla has systematically REMOVED FUNCTIONALITY from the browser, and I'm not talking about switching from XUL. Personally I don't care if XUL ever comes back. I don't even use many extensions, mostly just uBlock.
A couple of versions ago they took out right-click for image properties! a basic function of browsing since Netscape Navigator and didn't add it back until two more releases. They took away my compact view mode. They foisted less powerful menus on me and removed configurable settings from about:config, the single most powerful customization feature of the core browser.
They keep chasing a new Chrome-like feature or look while killing things I use regularly. I don't want that shit. I want the old customizable feature-rich Firefox experience I had back in the 2.0 days.
So many users eject after each interface overhaul or silent removal of basic functionality and Firefox's trademark customizability. Yet they kept doing it. Madness.

Completely agree. Practically every version it's back to https://www.userchrome.org to figure out how to change the css to get it sort of back to what I had before. It's never perfect but it helps a little.

Another issue I have is the address bar itself. For many years the address bar drop down would show you a list of your most frequently typed in sites and items could be removed easily with the delete key (removed entries would come back if you typed it back in and continued to go there). The important part for me was it was specifically based on addresses you typed into the address bar. Not links you followed, not bookmarks, only what you typed. Now it shows a list of random sites you visit frequently (I guess?) but it's not consistent, the order and entries constantly change randomly even within a single session and between tabs, it seems to be limited to six sites, and it doesn't differentiate between sites I type versus follow links versus use bookmarks versus even my default homepage. The address bar also has a bunch of stuff at the bottom related to different search engines that you have to customize/remove from a new tab page. So, if you have set new tab to blank you can't get to those settings and you have to go back to the default, change the setting, then revert back to a blank page. It's a UI disaster area.

You can change all of this in the settings. Under Privacy & Security, look for Address Bar. You can check or uncheck Browsing History, Bookmarks, Open Tabs, Shortcuts, and Search Engines. So if you don't want it to look at some of those things, just uncheck their respective options.

 

[flipside]

From Wikipedia, meanwhile the CEO:

"In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008"

"By 2020, her salary had risen to over $3 million."

"In the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues"

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker

From the Article

In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[14] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."

The „While laying off 250 people“ combined with the „too big a sacrifice“ reasoning makes me wanna barf.

Then just leave! But since she has a lawyer background and set the whole racket up, she‘ll milk this to the end.

 

[cleek]

I use Firefox on all of my devices. No issues at all with performance or usability.

I use it too (containers are really nice for separating things) but mobile one doesn't have swipe down to reload and it's driving me crazy.

Honestly it's really difficult to recommend FF over vivaldi to anyone. FF is byzantine as fuck and everything needs some random add-on (we all know the security of many of those).
I would love to have vivaldi like browser based on FF. Something where I don't need bunch of security nightmares in order to use it and it accepts that different people work in different ways, unlike mozilla that is our way or highway.

Are you on Android? iOS has had swipe down to reload for quite a while now.

I have always tried to support Firefox just to have diversity in the ecosystem. I still use it regularly on desktop but had to remove it for iOS due to recent UI changes that were driving me crazy. Specifically their choice to open a new tab every time I opened the app with no option to change the behavior back to opening to my last used tab (which is what I want my browser to do). I am now using Edge but wish FF had just left things alone and focused on improved performance and reliability instead of useless UI changes.

Settings -> Homepage -> Opening Screen: Last tab. That option has been there since the beginning.

i've always used FF. but some of their UI decisions are just baffling.

what they did to the new tab page with the last UI update is truly confusing. they've always had a big edit control in the middle of the page, which acts as a search box. and i'd grown accustomed to using that, instead of the little search box on the toolbar. and i HATE using the URL control as a search because those are two separate functions. the combined URL and search control is why i hate Chrome, in fact.

anyway, they still have the search box on the new tab page, but when you start typing in it, focus immediately jumps to the URL bar and you end up typing in there, instead.

so they've created this new fake edit control that looks exactly like every edit control since the beginning of time, but behaves unlike any control that has ever existed. and why? because they want you to use the URL bar for search. why not just remove that edit control? why turn it into this cludgy fake thing that only infuriates me?

other than that...fine browser.

Ctrl+K is your friend. It gives focus to the search bar. Alt+D for URL, Ctrl+K for search. And if you have the search bar removed, like me, Ctrl+K turns the URL bar into the search bar.

all Ctrl-K does is superimpose some flash on top of the URL bar.

open a new tab. look at what FF shows you. look at the big edit control clearly labelled "Search with Google or enter address". now try to interact with that control knowing everything you know about how GUI's have worked since Windows 1.0.

 

[Deleted member 1]

I honestly don't know why anyone uses Chrome. It's not any faster, and privacy is way more difficult because Google is now just as psychotic as Facebook ("Meta" my ass).

I wouldn't use a Chromebook as a paperweight. Because within ten minutes, every device in my house would start spamming ads at me for "paper management solutions."

 

[cleek]

Eich also inflicted JavaScript on the world. After that atrocity, he ought to consider himself lucky to be allowed to draw breath.

I do not agree. JavaScript may not be the best language in the world, but it's perfectly useable and allows one to do a lot of extremely nice and useful stuff in the browser. The fact that there are a lot of developers who insist on writing horribly slow, bloated code with it isn't the language's fault: they'd still write slow and bloated code, even if they had to switch to something else.

You shouldn't be able to do "nice and useful stuff" in a browser. HTTP and HTML were not designed as application platforms, and abusing them that way has cause incredible amounts of pain. Come for the layers of incomprehensible hacks, stay for the continuous 20-year stream of security holes.

If people wanted a remote platform for general applicaitons, they should have designed one from scratch, not tried to shove it into an architecturally incompatible system.

The funny thing is that I was in a room where Netscape pitched JavaScript as a "more secure" alternative than Java applets for server-side code. It's true that the JVM was shit and the Java sandbox was incredibly porous, but JavaScript never even had a sandbox.

It's also nasty just viewed as programming language, but honestly I have to cut some slack for that part. It was thrown together in like a week, and the intended application was validating forms, not writing every possible kind of computer application.

they weren't designed to be platforms. but they are now, like it or not.

and JS, at least when bolstered with TypeScript and frameworks like React/Redux and a RESTful backend, is actually a pretty good platform.

 

[I don't know who I am]

I don't understand why people like chrome. I'm stuck using it for work but would never use it at home. It exists to generate revenue for Google….not interested.

 

[T018]

I like Firefox, but can't use it at work with the same QoL due to IT. Seems they blocked the ability to access the page for syncing accounts because they didn't want to deal with tickets from fools who lost their firefox password and thought company it would wave a wand for it....

 

[adipose]

A lot of people upset about XUL and XPCOM. But they were truly terrible. What was good was you could simply replace browser code with your own. What was bad was that same thing. I was using about 10 extensions when the switch came and I did lose functionality. All of it was eventually restored but I am sure they lost users over it. But actually developing for that was as ugly as sin.

Firefox webextensions are way better than Chrome's. Precisely because they had to go make APIs to support the most important extensions. Overall I think its was a painful but necessary change.

Add-ons are still an attack vector, but with XUL, they were effectively super users. Today that would have been a nightmare.

I think it is time for Mozilla the corporation to go. A great browser should be possible for 100M per year, and we can lose pocket, vpn, and all their other garbage. The code base is still salvagable. But I am not sure the corporate image is.

 

[Thorzdad]

Where can I get a browser that allows tabs under the address bar? This can be done in FF (what I use now), but there is this continual war between the developers and users on this feature.

I think the tabs positioning battle stands as the poster child for the FF dev team’s dismissive attitude toward users.

 

[Causification]

To be precise:

* XUL abandoned and with it thousands of powerful extensions (a ton of them have never been reimplemented)
* UI has been changed great many times with the last iteration probably the most horrible one (considering all the white space, huge fonts, gray nondescript icons) - on Reddit people were really unhappy
* Features removed
* Full themes support removed
* Browser customization shrunk
* Only a couple of years ago Firefox stopped leaking RAM like crazy
* Over the past decade most significant changes have been made behind closed doors or in bugzilla where only Mozilla employees are allowed to opine.

And here's their last feat:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30375640

Yeah, it's all "because of" Google Chrome. Really. Except Mozilla has actively been shooting themselves in the foot for the past decade.

Edit: have fun.

Firefox has spent ten years chasing Chrome instead of focusing on its own users. They're so obsessed with the fantasy that they could one day have that thirty percent market share again that they threw the ten percent of us who *adored* Firefox into the trash. I'm going to be very sad the day Mozilla restructures and abandons browser development, but I'd be lying if I said all the things I loved about them didn't die years ago. Rest in peace, buddy.

 

[foolishgrunt]

Y'all, I read the first two pages of comments. Sorry pages 3-7, but I didn't see anything on the first two to make me think you'd be any different.

I see much griping about Firefox removing customization abilities. A lot of these complaints are valid, but if any of you have anything more to say about the death of the old extensions system, then STFU. This isn't the early 2000's anymore: the largest vulnerability in any system is the web browser. Just like we all realized that plugins needed to die, we also realized that the old model that allowed incredible freedom for add-on developers to access to inner workings of the browser had to change as well. It was a painful pill to swallow, but not swallowing it would have been even worse. If you're still butthurt and feel like rolling the dice, then run with Pale Moon and pray to the gods of security through obscurity.

If you ask me, Mozilla took about the best path possible. They targeted compatibility with the extensions API used by the 800 lb gorilla (Chrome), and worked to build upon it in whatever ways they could and standardize it as WebExtensions. They didn't end up adding as many features as they wanted, and WebExtensions hasn't been as widely-adopted as they had hoped, but that doesn't mean it's been a waste of effort - just ask Raymond Hill (UBlock Origin developer) or the team behind GNOME Web/Epiphany (WebKit-based but working on experimental WebExtension support).

 

[Unclebugs]

While I understand why a lot of consumers have dropped Firefox for Chrome as Android took off, I think there's another really big reason Chrome is so dominant. They provide .admx files which allows businesses with a Windows ADDS environment to manage Chrome and it's configuration in a very granular way. I remember pushing it hard as a sysadmin because it was a realistic alternate to IE we could centrally manage. That's the sort of thing that, because of privacy concerns nowadays, Mozilla could use to displace significant market share with privacy-conscious businesses. There needs to be a comparable "Firefox for Work" sort of option that can be centrally managed.

This might fly, but it would have to be sold to education as well. Just about every public school district in the country is using Google Classroom, and that was before the pandemic. Of course Google Classroom works best on Chrome with a Chrome laptop which most school districts bought for students because they are cheap to get into. Of course all tech support departments hate them because they have the life span of Soviet-era equipment in combat. In addition, just about every public school district is under attack by ransomware, happened twice just before the pandemic in my school district. Chromebooks weren't affected or my MacBook, but all those Windows machines were toast. All those tens of millions of US students using Chrome laptops at home or school, or on their phones creates a pipeline to lifelong usage. Kind of like joe Camel.

 

[knallfrosch]

Let's face it: Ads dominate the web, because users dont wan't to pay with money.

Firefox needs money to develop its own rendering engine, but where does it come from? Privacy-invading ads, of course.

People use Chromium browsers (which do not need their own rendering engine) like Brave because the privacy features are there, but they ruin the internet by ceding control to Google.

 

[stormcrash]

While I understand why a lot of consumers have dropped Firefox for Chrome as Android took off, I think there's another really big reason Chrome is so dominant. They provide .admx files which allows businesses with a Windows ADDS environment to manage Chrome and it's configuration in a very granular way. I remember pushing it hard as a sysadmin because it was a realistic alternate to IE we could centrally manage. That's the sort of thing that, because of privacy concerns nowadays, Mozilla could use to displace significant market share with privacy-conscious businesses. There needs to be a comparable "Firefox for Work" sort of option that can be centrally managed.

There is a firefox for work with ADMX templates. Heck DISA just released GPOs for firefox last month.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/

I'm in a primarily MS shop and managing Firefox through Intune is pretty easy with ADMX templates deployed through Intune. It even has the option to enable Windows SSO which helps a bunch if you use conditional access policies or just want to make it easy for your users to get signed in to their account.

Seems like a lot of people's knowledge is out of date on the Firefox enterprise support aspects. If it integrates with Windows SSO and can be managed via InTune that basically covers what most enterprises need in a managed browser solution

 

[stormcrash]

While I understand why a lot of consumers have dropped Firefox for Chrome as Android took off, I think there's another really big reason Chrome is so dominant. They provide .admx files which allows businesses with a Windows ADDS environment to manage Chrome and it's configuration in a very granular way. I remember pushing it hard as a sysadmin because it was a realistic alternate to IE we could centrally manage. That's the sort of thing that, because of privacy concerns nowadays, Mozilla could use to displace significant market share with privacy-conscious businesses. There needs to be a comparable "Firefox for Work" sort of option that can be centrally managed.

This might fly, but it would have to be sold to education as well. Just about every public school district in the country is using Google Classroom, and that was before the pandemic. Of course Google Classroom works best on Chrome with a Chrome laptop which most school districts bought for students because they are cheap to get into. Of course all tech support departments hate them because they have the life span of Soviet-era equipment in combat. In addition, just about every public school district is under attack by ransomware, happened twice just before the pandemic in my school district. Chromebooks weren't affected or my MacBook, but all those Windows machines were toast. All those tens of millions of US students using Chrome laptops at home or school, or on their phones creates a pipeline to lifelong usage. Kind of like joe Camel.

I think the biggest missed opportunity Mozilla had was not pivoting FirefoxOS into a ChromeOS competitor after the mobile push fizzled out. I understand that the resources probably weren't there and why they needed to at least try to get a toe in mobile before it was fully too late but an open lightweight browsing OS for home/school/business that isn't dependent on el Goog would have been awesome and possibly compelling before ChromeOS hit critical mass in the last few years

 

[renoX]

I was a Firefox user until it lost my bookmarks (it was a long time ago) I had to manually reimport my bookmarks from a backup, not fun..
So I switched to Chrome but ads are becoming more and more annoying (videos on ars technica) so I'm thinking about going back to Firefox but I need continuous bookmarks sync with Chrome..

 

[VividVerism]

on Reddit people were really unhappy

I can all but guarantee this will be the case in response to any topic, at any given time.

 

[stormcrash]

I am one of the handful of people using Firefox on my phone, specifically so that I could use PrivacyBadger and uBlock. It usually works well, but there are a handful of mobile sites that don't work with FF.

I used to use Google Chrome as my backup mobile browser, but when I started getting spam from recently visited sites and noticed that the 'delete cookies upon exit' option had disappeared, I disabled it and replaced it with Edge.

Another complaint with Google is how their sites seemed to break with such regularity on FF. I recall another article from several years back about FF's declining market share that interviewed someone at Mozilla about it and they concluded that it was likely deliberate, but that FF wasn't going to bite the hand that feeds it. Problem was, every time it happened, FF lost market share and never regained it. Sure would be nice if Mozilla could find a better corporate sponsor.

There was certainly the time where Google added an invisible nonsense tag to YouTube that tripped up Edge and Firefox for JIT compiling but somehow Chrome magically just ignored it. Google is absolutely abusing their monopoly powers to reinforce each other, and their doing it in much more sinister ways like this and getting away with it.

It's a dis-virtuous cycle of dominant Google stuff works better in (and shills for) Chrome > Google users switch to chrome > other sites start just testing for Chrome > other sites now work better in chrome > other site users switch. All of this despite Firefox and even old Edge being compliant with standards and performant on sites that don't use chrome specific/pre-release functions that aren't final in the W3C spec, basically letting google decide the future of web standards

Mozilla did try one time when the default search setting changed to Yahoo(Bing) but users threw a huge hissy fit and Google got it's spot back. What would have really been nice was if Microsoft and Mozilla had teamed up on new Edge instead of going the Chromium route, but I can't really blame MS for doing what made the most financial sense.

 

[VividVerism]

Specifically their choice to open a new tab every time I opened the app with no option to change the behavior back to opening to my last used tab (which is what I want my browser to do).

Occasionally this happens to me too, on mobile. I haven't figured out what causes it, since most of the time it just opens to the same page I was reading when I last closed the browser.

But there's a "continue where I left off" button that takes me right back to where I was going anyway, so it's not too big a deal for me.

 

[VividVerism]

At this point, I've lost hope in Mozilla/Firefox fixing its way. The faster it dies, the faster something new fixing it might be born.

Why do you think anything new will pop up? Or at least, anything new that Firefox is preventing by existing? Plenty of Firefox forks have popped up in response to one change or another, but the combined Gecko share is miniscule.

Someone could make a new Gecko browser now, if they wanted to. Someone probably is making another Blink browser right now as I write this (it seems like shovelware Blink browsers are like cockroaches these days). It will be hard for them to get any more browser share than Firefox has now. Every user they gain needs to be pried from another browser, probably Chrome or Edge.

And the idea of starting from scratch with a brand new rendering engine is a non-starter. That'll never happen. They'd be starting literal decades behind the established players just to get feature parity, let alone offering any compelling reason to switch.

 

[VividVerism]

As a desktop Linux user, the thought of Firefox going away is frightening.

Putting aside Mozilla's own lack of direction, what really perplexes me is why there's so many projects dedicated to fluff like desktop environments but almost zero motivation for a good browser/fork. RedHat/IBM seem to only care about the cloud, so there's no hope for Epiphany anymore. Canonical is busy trying to snapify everything to ensure we turn geriatric while waiting for snap packages to load. System76 wants to build yet-another-gnome-alternative instead of doing something sensible like donating to the Librewolf project.

Seriously, if/when Firefox dies (they've started working with Satan/Meta, so it's pretty close I reckon), I'll probably just ditch desktop Linux for home use and move to iPadOS (personally not a fan of MacOS, which I use at work) and Safari or something, because the only alternatives on Linux at that point will be reskinned Chrome alternatives like Brave, ugh.

My current next stop, if Firefox finally dies enough to make me leave, is probably Vivaldi. They seem to have a Linux release. I have no idea how good it might be.

 

[Bigdoinks]

I use Firefox and want to keep using it but the UI changes increasingly make it hard to love. Last year the tab bar was redesigned in a way that actually makes it hard (certainly on Linux) to identify where each tab begins and ends, especially when there are a lot of tabs. It's certainly not a good move from an accessibility perspective. Random UI changes don't suddenly make your browser more "modern".

On the bright side, the whole UI in FF is customizable with a bit of CSS. https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ is a great community resource for anyone looking to do so.

 

[VividVerism]

Have you not tried Palemoon? I use that on Linux and Windows. It's pretty much Firefox from 10 years ago as far as the GUI is concerned.

Also as far as the codebase is concerned.

Someone mentioned a single person was maintaining it for a while.

The information security professional in me is terrified of the thought of 10-year-old browser code with a single maintainer, in the best case.

The fact that the browser exists because a bunch of users had a tantrum over the removal of features that were holding back security improvements, so they forked to keep the insecure architecture in place, just makes it even worse.

 

[VividVerism]

He's now at Brave, the subscription-based Chromium-based browser. I see that lately he's been creating crypto currencies (at least one specifically for Brave)...

I guess that's why Vivaldi's home page has a blurb about why cryptocurrency is bad and calling them "opportunities" is bad and therefore they won't be part of the browser. I wondered about that. It seemed an oddly specific criticism to have on a browser web page.

Now I know.

 

[Legatum_of_Kain]

I've used Firefox since before it was named Firefox, I use it on all devices I use that can use it and where a web browser ever would be needed. Considering what way the wind keeps blowing, Google can rip Firefox from my cold dead hands.

To be a bit more serious, I don't know what browser I would use whenever Firefox eventually dies. Probably whatever springs from its ashes, maybe another Firebird?

Everything else is just another Chrome(ium) browser. Seen one, seen all.

Yes, the only other one is in precarious state and for *nix only, Konqueror.

 

[real mikeb_60]

While I understand why a lot of consumers have dropped Firefox for Chrome as Android took off, I think there's another really big reason Chrome is so dominant. They provide .admx files which allows businesses with a Windows ADDS environment to manage Chrome and it's configuration in a very granular way. I remember pushing it hard as a sysadmin because it was a realistic alternate to IE we could centrally manage. That's the sort of thing that, because of privacy concerns nowadays, Mozilla could use to displace significant market share with privacy-conscious businesses. There needs to be a comparable "Firefox for Work" sort of option that can be centrally managed.

Agreed. At least for enterprise use cases -- and browsers are, for better or for worse, essential in a business environment. Firefox requires keeping it on it separate ESR update channel, and managing it well doesn't fit as neatly within typical AD management tools. The Chrome+IE model has been a mainstay for some time in the enterprise world.

At least until Chromium-based Edge came along...

Microsoft's Chromium-derived browser has become a no-brainer for ease of manageability and integration with Office 365/AzureAD. At this point, I'm seeing a trend toward O365+Edge and Google Workspace (G Suite)+Chrome as the typical choices. Firefox is losing relevance in the business space except for applications that depend on it.

Hmmm. How about Firefox + LibreOffice webapp (the latter exists, but has always been a stepchild) with a paid server (or package for hosting it at $cloud) tier? It wouldn't sell in huge numbers (corporate does love corporate, after all), but might to small business and some (mostly European) governments that prefer open source. As a practical matter, though, we seem to have reached the point where Chrome(ium) rules, completely, and everything else (even Apple's love for Safari won't push the market share much beyond Apple products) is a footnote. For that matter, *is* there anything but Chromium, Webkit, or Gecko as a basic browser engine any more?Edit: answered in immediately previous post: Konqueror; not really an option.

For the record, I use FF on all of my computers. Never really got into it for the phone; use DDG there (on Android - no idea what their code base is - not documented - but it sure works like a dumbed-down Chrome with better privacy - which is OK for my normal use). Also have Edge on the Windows machines because ... you can't have Windows 10 without it for practical purposes. And it is helpful to have something that can run those Chrome-only web sites occasionally; thankfully, that particular need hasn't grown much recently.

 

[VividVerism]

Declaring your intent publically via open donation is functionally bringing it to workplace. Your LGBTQ+ employees and board members cannot unlearn that you, their CEO, doesn't think they deserve rights. You've permanently strained relations and caused a PR row. If I openly donated to a "protect anti-miscegenation 2022", I'd be out on my ass faster than you could blink, and rightfully so.

Speaking of anti-miscegenation, donations to political parties are openly available.

Should people who donated to the party that filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the party of "massive resistance" to school desegregation, the party that invented and enforced the Jim Crow laws...

...be cancelled?




source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

Nothing whatsoever happened in the 60+ years since. Absolutely nothing.

IOW: Don't be an idiot.

And it's like...yes. Yes, people who perpetuate the shitty parts of a political party should be removed from the party.

And they were. Which made the party better.

I'm not sure that's the best example for them to bring up in support of their point.

 

[VividVerism]

I've been using every iteration of FireFox if not from day one at least from day three or thereabouts. Sad to say it is becoming more and more apparent that, even in the mundane task of simply opening a site and using it, the browser is increasingly not up to the task. When I access a site and it refuses to cooperate my first reaction is to disable the VPN if that seems safe. If that doesn't work I now automatically fall back to Edge (which I absolutely hate on general principles) and invariably it allows usable access even with the VPN turned back on. It is becoming intolerable and I'm afraid that eventually I'll have to simple abandon FF.

My first reaction when I'm having site problems in Firefox is to disable the "enhanced tracking protection" for the site. Seems to fix around 2/3 of the problems I have, I've found. My bank is completely nonfunctional with it turned on, for example. Can't even log in.

 

[J.King]

I'm talking currently. The mobile UI is still in flux. Features come and go without warning.

Still? Hasn't it been (theoretically) out of beta for nearly two years now? I'm still using Firefox 68 (as I type this) because I couldn't the new mobile UI. Sounds like it isn't time to upgrade yet.